ELIZABETHAN MUSIC

Elizabeth loved great banquets, music and dancing, riding and hunting, and was particularly fond of bear-baiting.
ELIZABETH MUSICAL HARMONY
The idea of society as musically ordered, of political unity as musical harmony, of ritual and dance as physical expressions of such order, are commonplaces of Reinassance thought.
The harmony of the cosmos, created by love, (descends) though the hierarchies of creation from the dance of the fixed stars, the planets and the elements below the planets to the lowest of earth’s elements: strams, flowers, animals, all lone then proper dance too.
The Elizabethan age loved music and produced recognized masters like the poet-musicians Thomas Campien and John Dowland.
From popular ballads and dance to solemn church music and the sophisticated music of the court, Elizabethans music was varied, delightful and moving.
All over the country, in small private houses and public inns, as well as at court, music was played and airs were sung.
AIRS OR LUTE SONGS flourished. They deal above all with love, its pleasures and its pains, in simple language and lightness of touch.
The following song celebrates Queen Elizabeth

ELIZA IS THEFAIRES QUEEN
Eliza is the fairest Queen
That ever trod upon the green.
Eliza's eyes are blessed stars,
Inducing peace, subduing wars.
O blessed be each day and hour
Where sweet Eliza builds her bower!
Come again,come again, come again,
sweet nature’s trasure
whose looks hold joys exceeding measure.

Music was an essential fact of every gentlemans’s education and it was the fashion at court for everyone, from the king down, to compose musical tunes and verses to go with them. But music was not the prerogative of royalty and aristocracy. Most people dabbled in it (se ne dilettava) to pass the time, expressing indirectly the relatively happy and peaceful era of the Golden Age.
People did not go to concert halls to listen to a piece of music. It was performed in the home.
It was during the Tudor period that the typical English tradition of viewing music as a domestic pastime took root.
THE MADRIGAL: originally a pastoral song, it developed in northern Italy in the 14th century. Petrarch wrote a number of them. In the 16th century there was a revival and it became popular in England where, however, it was re-elaborated and adapted to suit the characteristic of the English language. The madrigal poem is usually short and simple both in language and ideas because, being polyphonic, the same phrases are often repeated and different words are sung by many voices at the same time making it difficult for the words to be distinguished. Two famous madrigals were:
THE NIGHTINGALE
IS LOVE A BOY?
The influence of the Italian madrigalists is also to be found in the AYRES, songs written for a simple voice to a lute accompaniment. The lute was the favourite instrument for accompanying the songs. Another great school is that of the Virginalist. They played an instrument called the Virginal, a small rectangular harpsichord (clavicembalo) played on the table or in the lap (in grembo). It was mainly used for songs and dances while the organ was used for sacred music.
Music in the Tudor age was also used for theatrical entertainment. Initially it was used in the MASQUE. Consider a later version of the INTERLUDE, the Masque was a form of Court entertainment presented though allegory and interspersed (inframmezzata) with a mixture of usic, song and dance. Soon however, with the development of drama, as the many form of entertainment in the popular theatres, instrumental and vocal music was introduced as part of the action, as an integral part of the play itself.
Given the great variety of people that made up the Elizabethan audiences, the playwrights, among them Shakespeare, rightly tried to please the different tastes by introducing all sort of music, ballads, love songs and folk songs.
Whereas, on the Continent a new genre called “opera” was gaining ground, especially in Italy, the great tradition of prose theatre in England delayed the spread of this new musical form for several generations. Sacred music had its heyday (apogeo) under the Tudors as well.
Fortunately, the Reformation had not killed off the desire for music as an accompaniment to the liturgy.